


Sometimes It's Better Not To Say Goodbye

by wordyanansi



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:03:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4803872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordyanansi/pseuds/wordyanansi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke wouldn't have called herself a runner. But she doesn't know how to make her friends watch her fade away. </p><p>Bellamy doesn't know how to let her go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes It's Better Not To Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.  
> This was an anonymous tumblr prompt and it's super depressing because I hate terminal illnesses and bittersweet endings but yeah.

Clarke honestly thought she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t big on goodbyes, it’s just a shitty memory that tugs at you every time you hear their name, so she writes letters. This whole thing, after all, was about preserving their memory of her. About making sure they remembered her with laughter.

_By the time you are reading this, I’ll be gone._

Such a stupid cliche. But it didn’t stop her. She wrote them late into the night, trying not to stain them with tears. She writes to Octavia first, Octavia who she thinks never really took to her, but who she loves just the same. Then Monty, who she knows will be okay. To her most fearless friend, Raven, who refuses to let anything stop her. She includes her resignation and forwarding information with Lincoln’s letter, because he was best place to pick up her mess, working with her at the gallery. She hesitated over names. The friends she had that she wasn’t as close with. These people that existed in her group, but that weren’t hers… Jasper, Miller, Wick… in the end, she knows there is only one more letter to write. The hardest one.

 

_“I think… I think we could be something great, you know?” Bellamy told her, intense, breath smelling like whiskey. She smiled._

_“You’re drunk,” she replies, but she’s smiling. She wishes he wasn’t. Wishes that this was it, the moment that they stopped dancing around this._

_“Not that drunk,” he replies. “Tell me I’m crazy or drunk or imagining things and I’ll shut up. But we could be, don’t you think?” Clarke bites her lip and looks up at him, and her smile spreads._

_“We could be,” she agrees softly, leaning slightly towards him. His face transforms and his fingers touch her cheek._

_“Do you mean it? Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” his voice soft, and his eyes fixed on hers. “Because I’ve been dreaming about you.” Clarke surged up on her toes and pressed their mouths together._

_“I dream about you too,” she whispers into his mouth._

 

What a difference forty eight hours could make, she thinks bitterly. They’d gone home separately and she hadn’t seen him since. Her fingers linger over the sealed envelopes, the names of her friends scrawled in cursive. She’s waited until Raven leaves for work, and the apartment already feels like it isn’t somewhere she belongs anymore. She places her keys on the table, and walks out, locking the door behind her.

She’s never been patient, good at waiting. But it’s worse now, now that every clock feels like a countdown timer. Clarke didn’t know where to go at first, but then the answer became simple. It wasn’t that Arkadia felt like home, but it was where her father was buried, and it seemed like the best place to go. She’d gotten to the train station half an hour early, and she sat on the platform, staring at the tracks. She should probably eat something, or grab a powerade. She should probably let herself cry, but she’s trying to wait until she’s on the train. It’s a long journey, and she’d rather wait until she doesn’t have to move again to let the wracking sobs take her over. But she can’t stop her knee bouncing.

She can’t figure out of it is selfless or selfish or both, what she’s doing. But she’s pretty sure it’s the right thing. She wishes she wasn’t going, didn’t feel like she had to. Wishes she could stay and live her life with her friends and laugh with them, cry with them, have them hold her hand… but she doesn’t want to put them through what the next few months will look like, doesn’t want to see their pity, their pain, watch them watch her fade away…

 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Bellamy’s voice startles her out of her thoughts, and she stares at him blankly, still walking toward her, his face the picture of fury.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, horrified. Because this was meant to be a clean getaway. He scowls.

“Obviously, I’m chasing you down. Clarke, what the hell is going on? You’re just leaving? No warning? No proper goodbye? No fucking forward address? Just thanks for the memories and you’re gone?” She can tell he’s trying not to shout at her, sees that he’s barely got his body under control. She swallows.

“How did you find me?” Clarke asks quietly. Bellamy cuts his eyes to the LED sign above them with ‘Arkadia’ scrolling across it.

“Where else would you run? If you were really leaving,” he asks, his voice momentarily soft. And it breaks her heart how well he knows her, knows exactly where she’d run. Probably took him less time to figure it out than she did.

“Please, I need you to leave,” she says softly. “Please. I don’t… It’s too hard if you’re here.” He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. His jaw works. If she could move, she’d stand up and touch his cheek with her fingertips. She can’t bear him behind there when she genuinely thought in the deepest down parts of her heart that he was going to be her future. But he wasn’t going to be her future.

“Well that’s too damn bad, Clarke. Because I’m not leaving here without an explanation. Is it… is this my fault? Because of the other night?” Bellamy asks her, and she watches it kill him, just a little, to ask it, to believe it. The tears prick her eyes, and she shakes her head.

“No, Bell, no it’s not. It’s…,” Clarke can’t quite look at him, and her voice is thick.

“Then what is it? Clarke, because I’ve been trying to figure it out, trying to figure out why you’d leave me- us. I thought… I thought we were… and then you’re just leaving and I don’t-,” Bellamy rants, but she cuts him him off.

“I’m dying.” It’s the first time she’s said it out loud. It doesn’t feel as real as when the doctor said it. Bellamy scoffs.

“We’re all dying,” he retorts, not even thinking about it. Clarke shakes her head.

“Bellamy, I’m dying. Three months left, apparently,” she says, and he stares at her, stares at her waiting for the punchline, for the other shoe to drop…

“You’re dying,” he repeats, it’s not a question. He collapses into the seat next to her, not touching. Clarke nods, offering him a sad smile.

“Last week a found a lump in my breast. My dad’s family… well, there was a good chance I’d get it. But I didn’t think… Anyway. I got the biopsy and scan results yesterday,” Clarke explains, but she can’t look at him.

“Is there… there’s nothing they can do?” he asks, and she can hear the lump in his throat. She shakes her head, finally looking at him.

“They said they could try, but it wouldn’t save me. Maybe just give me a little longer. But… I’ve seen chemo and radiation. It might give me a couple of months, but…,” her voice trails off. She looks at him, his eyes full of tears.

“Why are you leaving, Clarke?” Bellamy asks, but this time he’s not angry. Clarke sighs.

“I love you, all of you, so much, and I didn’t… I didn’t want you guys to have to watch it, and I wanted you to remember me properly. Not sick and dying. Laughing and alive. I’d rather you hated me for leaving than remembered me like that,” she says, looking at him.

“I love you,” Bellamy says. And in the pause that follows, she smiles at him, but he frowns. “No, I really love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve wanted to say something forever and I’m not just saying it because of this. I mean it.” Clarke can’t stop the tears trailing down her cheeks, but she presses her lips together while she nods. She can see the tears shining in his eyes, but she can’t make herself reach for him.

“I’m in love with you too,” she admits. “I thought we’d, god, I don’t know, grow old together or something.” Bellamy shook his head.

“Don’t go,” he says and reaches for her hand, tears finally coming. “Don’t go. Please. Stay here. Stay with me.” Clarke licks her lips, shaking her head.

“I can’t do that to you, Bell,” she tells him, squeezing his hand.

“But you can leave me knowing I’m never going to see you again? Clarke, this isn’t fair. None of this is fair. But please don’t do this. Please,” Bellamy says, his voice breaking. An announcement plays over the loudspeakers, ten minutes until the train arrives.

“None of this is fair,” Clarke says hopelessly. “But it’s… it’ll be better this way.” She nearly adds ‘won’t it?’, but stops herself. Bellamy looks at her desperately.

“Let me look after you. Let me… I want this. God, Clarke. Please. We don’t get forever, or fifty years. We get three months. So we’ll make them count,” Bellamy whispers, sincere, earnest, and intense. She’s crying in earnest now, despite trying not to, separated from him by her duffel bag, gripping his hand tightly in hers. Her best friend, the man she loves. He means it. He’s watched his mother die from AIDS, slowly fade away, and he’s cared for her, and he knows what it will look like in the end, how it will smell, and feel. And her brave, beautiful man wants her, wants to be with her anyway. She covers her face with her other hand and cries and cries and cries.

The speaker system sounds the five minute warning until her train arrives, and Bellamy stands up, pulling her up by their joined hands and then wrapping her tightly against his chest.

“If you say you have to go, I mean really have to go, cannot stay, I get it. I get running away. But let me come with you, at least. Please Clarke. Don’t shut me out,” Bellamy whispers into her hair. She presses her face into his chest, breathing the scent of him in. “Let me love you, Clarke. Let me take care of you.” And in that moment, Clarke can’t imagine facing the next three months without any of them. Without Octavia’s lack of pity, and Raven’s sarcastic humour. Without the way Monty would try and distract her with stories, and he and Jasper would reenact parts of their day and build silly things to make her laugh. Without Lincoln’s steady presence, the way he talks about art and will bring her beauty. Without Miller talking shit during poker games, even if they are on her hospital bed. And she can’t imagine it without Bellamy. She can’t imagine not having their first date, can’t imagine not falling asleep beside him, can’t picture the hard days without him beside her.

“It’s selfish,” Clarke whispers. Bellamy holds her tighter, but doesn’t say anything. She hears the train pull into the station and she steps back from him and shoulders her duffel bag. He looks at her like his world is ending as the hydraulic doors open with a hiss.

“Okay,” Clarke tells him. “Let’s go home.”

 

 


End file.
